


Space Oddity

by joongz



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, M/M, Mystery, Outer Space, Partly Epistolary, Unconventional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21905878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joongz/pseuds/joongz
Summary: “Hongjoong,” Seonghwa said quietly. His lips stretched out into a small and hesitant smile. “Did you remember?”Hongjoong swallowed guiltily. “No, but it doesn’t matter. You’re here now, this is a new start.”“Yes, it’s better than nothing,” Seonghwa agreed. “May I hug you?” he asked after a beat of silence, his cheeks growing pink.Hongjoong swallowed again, a lump in his throat. He felt his mouth run dry and his entire self tremble, but he nodded his head. Seonghwa moved in, wrapping his arms around Hongjoong tightly, and buried his face into the crook of his shoulder, inhaling deeply. Hongjoong returned the hug hesitantly, grabbing Seonghwa’s white shirt.He was real. He was alive.
Relationships: Jeong Yunho & Song Mingi, Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa
Comments: 6
Kudos: 75





	Space Oddity

**Author's Note:**

> Last fic of the year !  
> I've been mostly working on my Hogwarts AU for the past month and needed a BREAK, so I wrote this to focus on something different for a while. I missed writing an experimental fic like this, with a strange plot and AI and space and... Aaaah I hope you all like it hehe ^^
> 
> PS: A song I recommend listening to that inspired bits and pieces of this fic is Firewall by Les Friction!

There had always been something peculiar about the way Earth floated through space. Covered by the poisonous clouds that rained down back in 2099, long after humanity had fled.

Hongjoong wouldn’t know anything about that, he was born in space. He didn’t know how old he was, in Earth years he’d be around twenty-one, in space measurements he had no clue as time held no meaning anymore, not the way it had on Earth anyway. When he went to work in the mornings at the Archive #5, a timer was put on to count down the hours. 10 hours. Of course, they could convert those hours into days, and days into months, and months into years, and years into a human lifetime, but they had given up on that long ago, it was too much of a hassle. And no one cared.

It was always night time in space, with the stars all around them; the moon still orbited around Earth, but it was a broken lump. An asteroid had shot right through it some time before Hongjoong had been born. He only knew what the moon once had looked like through photographs and video recordings made from Earth, those that he catalogued and archived during his work.

Hongjoong always thought he was meant for greatness, becoming a part of the Xplorers, that trained in The Saturn and went out in their small spaceships—they were named S.D.A.s, acronym for Short Distance Aircrafts—and their protective suits, conquering the nearest corners of the universe; but Hongjoong had failed the test. Colorblindness was the reason, and Hongjoong never had hated himself as much as he had on that day, the disappointment seeping out from all corners of his mind.

Ever since he could remember, he wanted to become a pilot, in The Saturn they had a specific program for pilots that he had aimed for. Now he was doing something boring and repetitive, and not great at all.

His friend Yunho had made it onto the Xplorers group. He often sent reports to Hongjoong where he explained everything he witnessed and discovered, the different alien races he had already encountered… It sounded all so exciting and productive.

Hongjoong was stuck in the Archives, working through files of dead humans to preserve their history on Earth, and make an understanding of what had gone down on the 15th of November in 2039, the day it had all started—or as it had become a common term between the space people, The Doomsday. Three years after it, the selected humans had escaped into space with several bigger spaceships.

The biggest one was The Mothership, as uncreative as the name was, it was a pretty cool spacecraft. Hongjoong had been on it the day he had taken his test for the Xplorers, too bad he held a bitter memory attached to it now.

Hongjoong himself lived and worked on The Jupiter, a small yet comfortable spaceship with the big Archives lining the bottom floors, the living area was made out of three floors by the middle of the ship—corridors upon corridors with small, single rooms—the top was the commando deck, where the officials and pilots worked at, making sure The Jupiter stayed in its position and, if there was a need to move it, navigate through space. Hongjoong never had been up there, only the highest ranking workers and officials were allowed there.

Hongjoong got to the Archive #5 a bit late despite that The Jupiter had been strangely empty on his way there.

His coworker was already waiting. “I’ve got a good feeling about today,” Jongho said in stead of a greeting. 

It was only the two of them that worked there, their old colleague, Mingi, had left under mysterious circumstances. He had taught Hongjoong and Jongho everything they needed to know, so it wasn’t as if his absence was all that terrible; still, Hongjoong had liked the guy and he wondered where he had disappeared to.

Their Commander hadn’t uttered a word about it; _it mustn’t concern you, K-0711_ , he had told Hongjoong when he had asked about it.

“You say that every day,” Hongjoong pointed out, unlocking the door to their working space.

It was a small office with a big, round desk in the middle, with two computers standing on it. Rows and rows with digital information lining by the back of the room, on the left were those shelves with the files they still had to work through; on the right, the considerably lesser cramped shelves, were the files they had already gone through, and those before them. Hongjoong turned on the light, cold and white, and headed to his computer. He had just absolved the case of a young man named Choi San, born on the 10th of July in 2019, an IT student; he had only been twenty when the world had gone under, and although his _Twitter_ feed had proven to be quite entertaining, there had been no useful information about The Doomsday.

“Well, maybe I find everyday to be a good day,” Jongho said, sitting down on his chair. He pulled out his Communication Pad and put it on the table, next to his computer. 

The Communication Pad was a small, rectangular object with which they could communicate with their higher ups (such as their Commander), but as well to sent messages in between them, in a more friendship-wise manner. There was, of course, an Informative Bot installed to which one could ask questions regarding their respective work, the spacecraft they lived on, the daily menus, and other things all around their living conditions.

“Really? You find working here to be good?” Hongjoong asked, waiting for the system of his computer to power up.

Jongho shrugged, tapping his chin. He had a relaxed pose, leaning against the chair as he waited on his computer as well, and a smile played on his lips. “Maybe it’s a good day because I get to see you.”

Hongjoong rolled his eyes. “Right…”

“Hey!” Jongho protested. “I find you to be very entertaining.”

“Doubtful, we just sit here for hours and click through digital files. I don’t even speak to you most of the time,” he countered, typing in his username (K-0711) and password (SpaceOddity).

“That’s your charm!” Jongho told him, leaning forward. He grabbed the edge of the table to pull himself in. “You’re this brooding and quiet guy, and some people actually value that. Myself included!”

Hongjoong couldn’t help the small blush that spread over his cheeks. He didn’t have many friends. Yunho was always out with the Xplorers and discovering space, and Mingi, who had really been more of a coworker and boss than a friend, had disappeared. Jongho was more like the intern he once had taught everything there was to know in the Archive #5, and now his new colleague.

“Thank you, I suppose,” he muttered. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Jongho grinned. Then he made a surprised _oh_ sound, licking his lips as he attentively read the screen of his computer. “Did you get the Commander’s notification, too? About the assignment?”

Hongjoong nodded. “Yes.” They were going to work on a combined case.

It could happen that on The Doomsday people had been hanging out together, their last conversations and coexistences happening digitally, and to maneuver them and understand what had gone down in between them, they assigned two different—or how many were needed—Archivers to work through it together.

“Park Seonghwa,” Hongjoong read. “Born April 3rd, 2018. Biochem student, lived with—”

“Jeong Wooyoung,” Jongho finished for him. “Born November 26th, 2019. Contemporary Dance student. Oh! I’ve always wanted to see what dancing is about, now I actually might,” Jongho said with an excited lilt to his voice.

Hongjoong frowned, not understanding what the hype was. It wasn’t as if they could just dance themselves; music no longer existed—Hongjoong wouldn’t even know the first thing about it. Everything labelled as ‘art’ had been left behind on Earth, deemed as unimportant to the evolution of humanity, unimportant in the vastness of space. Hongjoong had encountered art throughout his job, different types of it—paintings, digital comics, photography—and he had found it interesting, but he could understand their superiors when they had deemed it as useless.

“Shall we begin?” Jongho wondered. “I’ll start with the events during winter of 2038, it seemed to be very important to Wooyoung.”

Hongjoong hummed, distractedly, scrolling through a familiar social network that held the name of _Instagram_ ; humans had used it to upload pictures and videos of themselves, their friends and family, their pets, their surroundings… Pretty much _anything_. Hongjoong found it extremely curious and entertaining.

But those weren’t the thoughts that ran through his head when he looked at Seonghwa’s feed. He had dark, nearly midnight black hair that he mostly chose to wear curled by the front—on some occasions he had it parted by the side, letting it hang messily over half his face—and kind, brown eyes. His nose was straight, slightly crooked by the tip, and he had full, pink lips. His follower number was high, indicating that he was obviously handsome. Hongjoong thought so, too.

Seonghwa was entrancing.

“Hongjoong! Hello? _Beep, boop. Beep, boop_ ,” Jongho tried to regain his attention, waving his hands in the air. “Are you there?”

Hongjoong blinked. He looked up at his colleague, smiling embarrassed.

“Sorry, I was—” He moved his hand in the direction of the screen. Jongho nodded his head in understanding. “I’ll be checking September of 2039. Seonghwa ‘tweeted’,” Hongjoong said, using the slang from back then, “about the protests happening around that time, that my previous file mentioned, too.”

Seonghwa found himself by a train station in the busy Chicago, where he was staying for his studies, accepted into a student exchange program between the Chicago and Seoul universities. Around him were the protests happening, which were growing in numbers those days, consisting of an ever growing group—becoming more vicious, more demanding. They protested against the government and their secrecy regarding a supposed leak in a big nuclear atomic power plant. Not just one, but a directed attack on several throughout the States. Hongjoong knew that it had been world wide, but each country—those that worked with nuclear atomic power, at least—had tried to keep it hush-hush from the general public to avoid a mass, worldwide panic breakout.

Seonghwa tried to get home, complaining on the social media platform _Twitter_ , interacting mostly with his friends. Jeong Wooyoung and a user with the handle _@_kang_ , whose display name was the single letter ‘y’, which Hongjoong knew nothing about. It was a very cryptic account. 

He scrolled through the events of that day, connecting the data bank of his computer with news outlets and other platforms in and out of Chicago, to create a bigger picture, but frustratingly he got the sensation that _something_ was missing. As if it had deliberately been deleted.

His Communication Pad beeped. It was unusual for someone to communicate during work hours. He frowned and grabbed it.

 _1 Message from: Info Bot_.

Hongjoong’s frown deepened. The Informative Bot _never_ messaged someone, it was an AI that held the single purpose of aiding those that _messaged_ _it_. Hongjoong opened the notification, his hands shaking with anticipation.

_h … … p_

That was all the message said, the format was already odd as the typical protocol was missing. Almost as if the AI had crashed or glitched out. Another message came in then.

> _Save W080 on contacts?_

Yes /  No 

The bot asked then. Hongjoong’s finger hovered of the _yes_ , trembling as he thought of how strange and creepy this was, but his curiosity was stronger. Nothing interesting and out of the ordinary ever happened in his life—well, aside from his mother’s death, but it was rather tragic than strange—this was by far the most bizarre encounter he had. 

_Why not_ , he thought, and added the contact. After a full minute of waiting nothing happened, and Hongjoong decided to keep working before anyone in The Control Room decided to take a closer look at the Archive #5, and realized he was slacking off.

**~*~**

His favorite spot on The Jupiter was by a big window that, most of the time, had view onto their dead Earth. It was a bit morbid perhaps, considering that everything down there had died—the plants, the animals, the humans—and it was a wasteland now, but Hongjoong liked it because it made him feel closer to those files he archived on the daily. He looked down at the almost perfectly round planet and wondered what it would have been like to walk through the green grass, swim in the vast ocean, or hear the city’s traffic filter through the window at a late hour of the night, when everyone was supposed to be asleep but they just weren’t.

He sat there now, with the Communication Pad in hand, and waiting for a message to come through, for a glitch to happen anew, but the device was completely quiet. He had messaged the Informative Bot and it had answered like it always did, eliminating the previous messages that had come through.

In the contact list, Hongjoong had found _W080_ , though, so it wasn’t as if he had imagined that whole exchange.

A thought crossed his head and he decided to open his Pad, selecting the work files he had downloaded onto it. Sometimes he liked to work before resting, getting ahead on it so he could become rewarded as Most Efficient Worker of The Jupiter—a reward that was handed out in all of the spacecrafts—and win a trip to The Mothership to use the relaxation area.

He opened Seonghwa’s _Twitter_ , but didn’t read through the several tweets about The Doomsday, instead he scrolled and scrolled until he reached some day in late 2037. 

He just sat there, with Earth at his feet, and read about Seonghwa’s day by day life.

 **seonghwa** _@park_hwa_

Not to become emo so late at night and drag all of you down, but I’m going through it... I feel so lonely, I just want someone to love.

**seonghwa** _@park_hwa_

I wish it wouldn’t be so hard, but…... I’m so repulsed by myself lol

**seonghwa** _@park_hwa_

Woo came over and brought me food from my favorite Korean place T_T He’s the only man ever! Sorry, San

(There was a reply underneath that ‘tweet’ and Hongjoong clicked it curiously as he had just recently worked through the files of a person named San.)

> **Sannie** _@choisan_
> 
> Ah, hyung….. that isn’t fair, I can’t buy you food all the way from Seoul T_T

Hongjoong halted, sitting up straight. That was Choi San, how had he missed this connection? He read the date, 18 Sept 2037. _Ah, of course_. He had only focused on the year 2039 when going through San’s files, never coming across Seonghwa or Wooyoung, but they had known one another before The Doomsday, seemingly very close friends.

It felt important—this connection—so Hongjoong kept scrolling through Seonghwa’s older posts, searching for San’s name.

He was startled out of his reading by the distinctive sound of boots coming down the corridor, the clacking of the sole against the metal ground resonated loudly in the quietness surrounding him. Not that it ever was completely quiet on The Jupiter, the buzzing of its engine was always present, and then there was another mysterious sound, that they all just referred to as their existence in space. The floating sound of the spaceship’s body hanging suspended in the endlessness of the universe—there wasn’t really a name for it.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the person approaching him said. It was one of the spacecraft’s guards, his gray uniform bringing out the paleness of his face. His black hair was styled back, perfectly flat underneath his hat. On his chest, he had a name plaque that read, K-1506, but Hongjoong knew him as Yeosang. 

It often happened that Yeosang was patrolling and found Hongjoong sitting there, after hours. At first, he had been bothered, and had threatened Hongjoong with ratting him out to his Commander. Now, it was part of Yeosang’s routine to check this corridor specifically to tell Hongjoong to go to bed.

Hongjoong got up, slipping his Communication Pad into his washed out black trousers. He nodded his head at Yeosang. “I’ll be on my way then.”

Yeosang hummed, his face blank. “See you tomorrow.”

Hongjoong smiled, nodding his head. “I guess you will.” He was already walking away when a thought crossed his head. He stopped and turned around to face Yeosang again, who was staring out of the window with a strange look upon his face. “Yeosang,” he called out, the guard turned around startled, “Do you know anything about the Info Bot glitching today?”

The guard squinted his eyes, then shook his head. “No, not that I know of. Why? Did it glitch for you?”

“No,” Hongjoong lied. He knew better than most that on The Jupiter—or any spaceship—you couldn’t really trust anyone. “It didn’t.”

**~*~**

The following day Hongjoong was filled with anticipation regarding his work day. 

He had spent the better half of his supposedly resting period reading up Seonghwa’s profile, getting back to the day the boy had created his account, in the year 2034 when he'd been only sixteen years old and a mess of a human. So incredibly sad for no apparent reason, yearning for someone or something, and somehow Hongjoong could relate to it for he yearned as well.

He had never given it much thought, what exactly it was that caused that chasm in his heart, but reading those messages of just wanting a _someone_ … It had made sense to him.

Hongjoong knew that on Earth people had fallen in love, most of the time choosing who it was they wanted to partner with, even getting together with humans of the same gender. In space that luxury didn’t necessarily exist, they were partnered together for the purpose of reproduction, based on a matchmaking system that focused on genetics and efficiency, rather than love. It had been like this for such a long time that the space people had already forgotten what love was. It could happen, like it had for Hongjoong’s mother, that they ended up falling in love with the person they were partnered with.

It hadn’t gone well for her, so Hongjoong didn’t harbor any hopes for when he was going to be forced into the matchmaking system.

“Ah, Hongjoong,” Jongho greeted him cheerfully. “You don’t look so well rested. You could pass for a Grey One!” he joked, a playful smile on his face.

Hongjoong rolled his eyes. “I was working,” he said, it wasn’t exactly a lie.

“Ew.” Jongho wrinkled his nose. “I take back what I said, you’re not really a fun coworker.”

It made Hongjoong laugh. He unlocked Archive #5 and turned on the light, stepping inside and holding open the door for Jongho.

“Did the Info Bot glitch out on you recently?” he wondered as he sat down; _might as well ask him_ , he thought. He turned on his computer, looking up at Jongho’s unusual silence.

His coworker had a puzzled look on his face. “Info Bot glitched out on you?” he asked, repeating Hongjoong’s question.

“Yes…” he responded, sitting up straight as he watched Jongho with interest. His off manners indicated that he knew something. “What is it, Jongho?”

His colleague sat down as well, avoiding Hongjoong’s piercing gaze, and turned on his own computer. He bit the inside of his cheeks, tapping the desk nervously. He looked around, his eyes falling onto the cameras hanging in several corners of the archive.

He finally opened his mouth to speak. “What, uh, what did the glitch look like?” he asked in a whisper.

Not what Hongjoong had expected. He licked his lips.

“There was a strange, out of protocol message, and—” Jongho was making a movement with his hands, as if to indicate Hongjoong to lower his voice. “And it asked me to add a contact I hadn’t seen before,” he added in a whisper, leaning forward so his coworker could hear him. “The contact was in a strange format, too.”

Jongho stared at him perplexed. “That’s odd, _very_ odd. I wonder why they did involve you with this…”

“What?” Hongjoong asked, confused. “Who’s they?”

Jongho shook his head. “Not here. Let’s work, then we can talk again.”

“Okay.”

They went to work quietly, but Hongjoong couldn’t help the curious and questioning glances he shot his colleague, if Jongho noticed them he did a good job at pretending not to, wholly immersed in what was happening on his computer screen.

Hongjoong was startled out of scrolling through Seonghwa’s _Instagram_ by the beeping of his Communication Pad. He blushed as the sound yanked him back into the present.

He hadn’t actually been doing what he was supposed to. He couldn’t help himself, something about Seonghwa was extremely appealing to him and he couldn’t stop wanting to know more about him—about his life on Earth and how he had spent his days.

 _1 Message from: Info Bot!_ The screen read, it was around the same work hour as the last message. He tapped the screen to open it.

_ >Contact W080 would like to contact you through %&@----- ERROR. _

**Error: Unknown Application.**

_ >Accept invitation to ? _

Yes /  No 

(Hongjoong frowned, staring at the blank space, but he did accept the invitation. This time he didn’t have to wait long for a message came in immediately.)

<connecting…>

**Connected!**

_> HELP _

_ >please tell me this worked _

_ >hello? _

_ >hongjoong _

_ >this is yunho _

(The blood in Hongjoong’s veins froze as he saw the name of his friend show up. With a shaking heart he grabbed the Communication Pad to answer.)

>Hi

>You’ve reached me

_ >oh, thank jupiter! _

_ >hongjoong_

_ >I’m lost in space _

_ >He’s not._

_ >that was mingi _

(Hongjoong clutched the Pad tightly, his already present confusion only growing at the name of his ex-colleague showing up on the screen.)

>How can you both communicate through the same contact?

_ >That doesn't matter right now. - Mingi._

_ >hongjoong, you need to get out of the jupiter - yunho_

>What?

>Why?

>Hello?

<disconnecting…>

**Disconnected!**

No more answers came, there was radio silence from Yunho and Mingi, and then the Communication Pad crashed. With a sigh he turned it on again, selecting the resetting option on the menu screen.

Hongjoong felt himself shiver strongly, sweat forming on his lower back as he felt strangely observed. He shot a glance towards the camera closest to their desk, hanging over the entrance door. He cleared his throat, going back to work.

“Hongjoong, you should check out the conversation Wooyoung and Seonghwa held during the summer of 2039, August 14th to be exact. Seonghwa was an intern at a big pharmaceutical laboratory during that time,” Jongho said, pulling Hongjoong out of his paranoias. “I think that could actually mean something. Or at least we will be entertained by a different plot, making these hours much more entertaining. A murder mystery!”

“Seonghwa was a real person,” Hongjoong said, bothered. “I wouldn’t enjoy reading about him being harmed by a group of rich, old men that ran a laboratory…”

Jongho rolled his eyes. “I forget you always get so attached to your files.”

“Not always,” Hongjoong protested, opening the conversation Jongho had spoken about.

“You’re right, only the pretty ones,” he said with a wink. It was harmless enough, some stupid fun, but Hongjoong felt his face grow warm. He swallowed.

“Shut up!” he told his coworker. “Go to Pluto!”

Jongho laughed heartily. “That’s outdated slang.”

“What do you say then, if you wish for someone to shut the _fuck_ up?”

“Eat a space rock!” Jongho told him happily.

“Eat a space rock, then, Jongho,” Hongjoong grumbled.

He focused on the conversation occurring between Seonghwa and Wooyoung: it started off with Seonghwa complaining about having to wake up at 5am so he could show up at 7am at the laboratory. Wooyoung sent a single ‘lol’ to that. A few hours later, the conversation picked up again with Seonghwa writing in all caps, saying that he was lost trying to bring a doctor an important file. Wooyoung tried to calm him down, but it was to no use as Seonghwa freaked out more and more, saying something about having walked into a restricted area.

> _Woo, they’ve got bodies here_
> 
> _Human bodies_
> 
> _They’re frozen in coffins_
> 
> _Not exactly the coffins we use to bury people. They’re gray and have a small window on the front for the faces_
> 
> _This is so fucking creepy, I’m out of here_

Wooyoung answered with differently formulated _hyung what the fuck_ ’s that all held the same sentiment of terror and confusion. Seonghwa didn’t reply for a while, sending his friend into a frenzy. Wooyoung panicked and wondered if Seonghwa had been caught and was going to be held hostage. Hongjoong bit his lip anxiously, his heart beating fast, he was worried for Seonghwa’s wellbeing—it was stupid considering he had died a very long time ago.

The thought made Hongjoong stop reading the conversation. For some reason Seonghwa had appeared so jarringly alive to him through all of these files, Hongjoong had forgotten that he was reading a dead person’s personal life. That had never happened to him before. He frowned and swallowed down the strange feelings that raised in his throat.

He kept reading the conversation, but nothing much happened. Once Seonghwa was back at his desk, he sent a few soothing messages to Wooyoung. Then they both carried on with their individual days, and the topic of the frozen bodies didn’t come up again any time soon.

“Did you read it?” Jongho asked, staring at him.

“The frozen bodies?” Hongjoong inquired, Jongho nodded. “What about them?”

Jongho wrinkled his nose. “Don’t you find it… unsettling?”

Hongjoong thought about it; a casket to freeze people in, for no apparent reason?

“Yes,” he answered.

“Do you think that might be connected to The Doomsday?” he wondered, biting his lower lip. Hongjoong shrugged. “I know you never believe me, but what if it was a calculated attack. Someone purposefully set it into motion because planet Earth was getting inhabitable—”

“ _Jongho_ ,” Hongjoong said, pressing his lips together into a thin line. They’ve had this conversation many times before. Hongjoong didn’t want to feed into Jongho’s paranoiac theories. About how it all had been planned, and their superiors just entertained them with these digital files, chasing something that had been a lie all along.

“Yes, yes.” Jongho rolled his eyes, annoyed, moving his hand dismissively. “There’s no reason for the Commanders to lie to us and make us work in the Archives if it were all a lie. I get it.”

Hongjoong hummed. “How absurd and counterproductive would it be to have hundreds of people work down here if they could be on The Saturn and become guards or on The Mars and be trained into soldiers, or become The Saturn's next Xplorers…”

Jongho stayed quiet, a bothered look crossing his face. He went back to click through Wooyoung’s files, and so Hongjoong returned to his work as well. He opened another string of ‘tweets’ belonging to Seonghwa, this time they actually were related to The Doomsday.

 **seonghwa** _@park_hwa_

Holy shit I just saw like seven military vehicles pull up to campus… what’s going on??

**seonghwa** _@park_hwa_

What the fuck, they’re telling us to evacuate and go to the dorms

**seonghwa** _@park_hwa_

I swear I just heard a bomb go off somewhere?????? The electricity went out in the dorms and uni and all the buildings nearby

**seonghwa** _@park_hwa_

I’m running on 43% battery and mobile data….. we’re dying tonight

> **seonghwa** _@park_hwa_
> 
> sorry probably shouldn’t make jokes about this… this is how much _@woo_oow_ has influenced me already

**seonghwa** _@park_hwa_

_@woo_oow_ you okay? You're not replying to my messages

After that, the ‘tweets’ became more and more incomprehensible, Seonghwa’s panic making him type strangely and full of grammatical errors; at some point he announced only to have 1% left of battery on his phone. It was around 1AM, the entire city of Chicago submersed into darkness and chaos.

Hongjoong nibbled on his bottom lip, a deep desire to somehow discover Seonghwa had been one of the people elected to escape Earth 3 years later. But then, it wouldn’t matter, he would’ve been dead now anyway. He shook his head, trying not to think about it. He wasn’t supposed to grow attached to the humans, they were digital files—nothing more.

Hongjoong swallowed, staring at the hour counter. 6:56. Still 2 hours left before he could finally leave, today was so agonizingly slow; his head felt like it was filled with space trash. 

He couldn’t concentrate, he couldn’t stop thinking about Seonghwa, he couldn’t stop worrying about Yunho and Mingi… He missed his peaceful and repetitive work hours, where he had just mechanically gone through the actions without questioning anything, without wondering too much about a file and the human behind it.

“Jongho,” he called out, at least he had a colleague he could speak to. Jongho looked up from his computer, surprised. It wasn’t often that Hongjoong initiated their conversations, even less during work. He opened the chat log from the nameless application. “There’s a message you need to see, here I have downloaded the file onto my Pad.” He moved the Pad towards his coworker, who took it and unlocked the screen with a swipe of his finger.

Trust was a dangerous thing, Hongjoong had learnt that the hard way when they had sent his mother away, but he was afraid to be losing his mind. He needed another person's input, and there was no one better to share this oddity with than Jongho, the resident's madman.

 _Trust yourself_ , Hongjoong's mother had always told him, and Hongjoong did so by entrusting Jongho with the chat log in between him and Yunho.

Jongho frowned. “This is not—” he began confused, but he fell silent quickly as he read the messages, his eyes widened. He looked perplexed for a second, then he schooled his expression into something carefully blank. “Ah, interesting. I too have read a similar conversation, the same people contacted me— _my file_ ,” he corrected himself quickly, glancing up at the camera, “some time ago. When _he_ first went missing…” He put the Communication Pad back down and slid it back towards Hongjoong.

Hongjoong raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You’ve—Your file has been speaking with _him_ , too, then?”

“Yes. Something is off— _was_ off.” He swallowed. “Shall we meet after work and discuss these files?” Jongho wondered, keeping his tone light and professional.

“Yes.” He nodded his head. “I love working on files after hours!” he added.

Jongho frowned. “Dude…”

“Shut up, I’m panicking,” Hongjoong hissed, his tone low.

After the ten hours were over, they finally left Archive #5. Hongjoong felt so tired and worn out, the beginning of a migraine pounding behind his eyelids. He locked the door, the corridor was unusually empty and, towards the back, where the elevator was, one of the white lights flickered ominously.

“Shall we go then?” Hongjoong inquired.

Jongho nodded his head, stuffing his hands into his trousers pockets. “Yes, but let’s take the stairs,” he said, jerking his in the direction of the staircase a few feet to their left. “I don’t trust the elevators,” he added in a whisper.

 _Right_ , Hongjoong thought, Jongho had a conspiratorial theory that Mingi had vanished because he had taken the wrong elevator at the wrong time. He walked towards the stairs, Jongho trailing after him quietly.

They didn’t encounter many other Archivers, The Jupiter was oddly quiet and empty, the usual ruckus around the dinner hour made the absence of their peers even more contrasting. Hongjoong shivered when they entered the Dining Hall, the hundreds of tables mostly unoccupied. The other Archivers were as wary as Hongjoong and Jongho, all of them exchanging confused glances.

There was something incredibly sinister about the desolate state of the spaceship.

By the door stood only one guard, usually there were supposed to be ten. Hongjoong approached the familiar guard, who was as stoic as ever, but his eyes flickered with something akin to relief when he saw Hongjoong.

“Yeosang,” he greeted him. Jongho stood close behind him, his arms crossed in front of his chest as he listened in. “Do you know what’s, uh, wrong today?” He pointed vaguely at the emptiness spreading out in the Dining Hall behind him.

The guard shook his head, his lips pressed together. “My Captain hasn’t uttered a word. Either he lost his Communication Pad or…” he trailed off with a shrug.

“Or, what?” Jongho asked, tone snappy. He had a tendency to become abrasive when he was stressed.

“Or, clearly something major is going on that they don’t want us, in the lower ranks, to know about,” Yeosang finished, his eyes meeting Jongho’s over Hongjoong’s shoulder.

“What do you mean by that?” Hongjoong asked.

The guard rolled his head, his shoulders sagging as he adopted a more comfortable position. “Let’s sit down and eat,” he offered instead of an answer. “I don’t think it does matter anymore if I’m standing guard or sitting down to eat.”

Hongjoong frowned, looking around them for any sign of a superior, but it was just the few Archivers and Yeosang.

“Jongho,” he whispered as the guard was ahead of them, by the dining counter to get his synthetic food, “do you think this has anything to do with Yunho and Mingi?”

Jongho bit the inside of his cheek. “Possibly. Mingi and Yunho haven’t told me much, it’s been hard to communicate with them, but they’ve warned me that it’s going to become dangerous real soon to be aboard The Jupiter—or _any_ spacecraft, for that matter.”

“What do you think is happening?” he wondered, holding onto the small knowledge his colleague had like his life depended on it.

“I’m not sure. I have my theories, but as you once said, they could just be the fantasies of a madman.”

Hongjoong looked down at the metal floor with embarrassment, guilt coursing through him. “I’m sorry about that,” he apologized.

Jongho shrugged. “Well, it’s accurate.”

Jongho had gone several times to the Fixing Station on The Venus for irrational and hysterical behavior. Before becoming an Archiver he had been part of the Eagles, an elite group of soldiers that went on the most dangerous missions. They were sworn to secrecy once they became an Eagle, but Jongho had only been in the preliminary groups before he had crashed. Hongjoong didn’t know anything about the exact breakdown, he only had heard the rumors that had found their way from The Mars onto The Jupiter.

Jongho had been bestowed the nickname Mars’s Madman, and everyone spoke of him as if he had lost his mind out in space. It was said not to trust his words and theories as they were nonsense… But Hongjoong wondered now, if perhaps Jongho had spoken the truth all along.

After the trio got their food, they sat by a table further away from the scattered few Archivers in the Dining Hall.

“All right,” Yeosang began, stretching out his legs under the table, his big boots hitting Hongjoong. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Hongjoong told him quietly.

“What do you know, Yeosang?” Jongho demanded of him, not wasting any time to beat around the bush.

Yeosang fixed him with a look, searching his face. “I know you. Aren’t you that crazy kid?”

Jongho squinted his eyes. “I am.”

But before Yeosang could launch into, what hopefully, was going to be an explanation, his Communication Pad beeped loudly, several times. The guard cursed, retrieving the device. He stared at it, his eyebrows shooting up.

“I have to leave!” he announced, moving his chair back, the feet scraping loudly onto the floor. “You should, too.”

“What?” Hongjoong asked, but Yeosang’s hurried answer was drowned by the sound of other Pads beeping incessantly.

Jongho opened his, Hongjoong peeked at the screen.

**Urgent message at all Archivers!**

_ >Due to a dangerous leak happening in The Uranus, Code Red has been called upon all ten ships. We order all Archivers to return to their individual room, where you will be safe from the toxic air. Once the situation is under control, you can go back to your usual schedule. _

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Jongho mumbled.

Hongjoong got up quickly, grabbing his tray of food. Jongho followed his movements. They exited the Dining Hall with all their colleagues, rushing to the corridor where the dorms started lining up and down on both sides.

Hongjoong lay in his bed, thoughts running through his head. He opened the nameless application. A crazy thought crossed his head, maybe it was the toxic air from The Uranus affecting him. He opened the folder containing Seonghwa’s downloaded file, searching for his ID (P-0304), then he typed it into the contact list of the mysterious application. A contact did appear, it had no name, but it was _there_. Hongjoong stayed still, his thumbs hovering over the keyboard. He swallowed, biting his lower lip, and finally typed something.

>Hello?

<connecting…>

**Connected!**

>Are you Seonghwa?

<thinking…>

(Hongjoong furrowed his brows, he had never seen that function before.)

_ >Yes. _

_ >Who are you? _

(His heart beat rapidly in his chest. He sat up and looked around, scared that someone was going to pop out of the darkness and take his Communication Pad away. That a Commander would materialize and arrest him or, worse, execute him. But nothing happened. It stayed eerily quiet in his room.)

>I’m Hongjoong from the Archives

_ >Well, hello, Hongjoong, nice to meet you. _

>Likewise

>How can I be sure you’re really Seonghwa?

_ >That’s funny. I don’t even know you, Hongjoong. Nor do I know of the Archives… _

>You make a strong point

>Let me introduce myself

>I’m twenty-one years old in Earth years. I work at the Archives because I’m colorblind. The Archives are, as the name indicates, archives where we file digital information about humans before The Doomsday in 2039

<thinking…>

_ >Lol, what? _

_ >Are you a science fiction cosplayer? _

>What?

_ >Nothing of what you just said makes sense to me. _

_ >But I’ll humor you since I have nothing better to do. _

_ >I’m Seonghwa, also twenty-one years old. I am a Biochem student and I live together with my best friend Wooyoung, who just went through a rough patch with his boyfriend, San. _

>I know

_ >How could you possibly know that? _

>As I said, I work through files

>Currently yours, before that it was Choi San’s

>My coworker is working on Wooyoung’s

_ >Right… That’s creepy. Do you know everything about me? _

>Not everything

>Just what you’ve given away about yourself digitally

_ >This is unfair. I know nothing about you. _

>We can try to get to know one another

<thinking…>

_ >Okay. _

_ >What’s your favorite band? _

>Oh…

>I have never listened to music

_ >What?! How is that possible? _

>I’m in space

>We don’t have music here

_ >Nonsense, music is everywhere. _

_ >It’s part of us. _

_ >You’re music yourself, Hongjoong. _

(Hongjoong bit his lower lip, his eyes wide as he read that. He didn’t know what the sound of music was, if he even liked it, but the comment made his head spin and his heart race.)

>Thank you?

_ > You’re welcome._

_ >I might not have a favorite band myself, but I enjoy mostly pop. Especially from female artists! _

_ >Much better than those gritty and overly masculine concepts… _

>I am afraid I am not following

_ >That’s okay, if we meet I’ll show you._

>If we meet?

_ >Sure, why not? _

>That’s impossible

>You’re just a digital echo of someone that died long ago

<thinking…>

_ >What? _

_ >I am not dead. _

>You can’t be alive

>That’s impossible

_ >Nothing is impossible._

>You’re not really real

_ >I think that’s for me to decide, not you. _

_ >I am real, whether you like it or not. _

>No

_ >Yes. _

_ >Reality is just a blink of an eye away. _

>What does that mean?

_ >I am real. _

_ >I can feel my body. _

>Then, where are you, Seonghwa?

<thinking…>

_ >I don’t know. It’s cold and dark. _

_ >This is scary. _

_ >Now that you’ve made me pay attention to my surroundings, I have to admit I do not like this very much. _

>Can you hear anything?

>See something?

_ >No, I told you it’s dark. _

_ >I hear a whirring sound. _

_ >Like an engine running. _

(Either The Uranus’ toxic leak was getting to Hongjoong’s mind or he was actually speaking with Seonghwa, not some phantom produced out of a recollection of his digital presence to mimic him as best as possible, but the _actual_ human he once had been on Earth. Somehow, Seonghwa was there in space with Hongjoong, _alive_. He tried to think of which spacecraft Seonghwa might be on. He ran a distressed hand through his hair, his heart beating quickly and loudly in his chest, it was almost painful.)

>I think you might be on The Neptune

_ >The Neptune? Like the planet? _

>No, the spaceship

>They have laboratories installed over there

>For medical and research purposes

>It’s the only ship where your presence would make more or less sense

>Not that it does

>You being space, I mean

>I doesn’t make sense

<thinking…>

_ >Am I really in space? _

>Miraculously, yes

_ >Why? _

>I think you were meant to die, but didn’t

_ >That’s reassuring! _

_ >Why was I supposed to die? _

>Well… 

>Earth is dead

>Inhabitable

>It’s been a long time

>I was born in space

<thinking…>

_ >Really? _

_ >Tell me about your childhood in space. _

(Hongjoong paused, trying to remember something from when he was a kid, but nothing came to his head. There were distorted memories, as if a heavy layer covered them up to prevent Hongjoong from taking a look at them. He frowned, scratching his neck nervously. He didn’t want the conversation to end. He needed Seonghwa’s trust.)

>I don’t remember anything

_ >You don’t remember anything? _

>I just said that, didn’t I?

_ >Chill. _

_ >Well, why don’t you remember anything? _

>I don’t know that

>How am I supposed to know why I don’t remember anything?

_ >I’ll tell you why. _

_ >Because you’re lying to me. _

_ >I am probably dreaming. _

>What?

>No

>I am real

_ >Liar. _

>To quote you, it’s for me to decide whether I am real or not

_ >Touché _

<thinking…>

<thinking…>

<thinking…>

_ >Oh, no. _

>What is it?

_ >This is bad. _

_ >I have to go. _

_ >There’s someone here with me. _

>Who?

>Seonghwa?

_ >You shouldn’t have woken me up, Hongjoong. _

_ >This wasn’t meant to happen. _

_ >Not like this. _

_ >Don’t contact me again, it isn’t safe. _

_ >Wait for me to message you first. _

>Okay… 

<disconnecting…>

**Disconnected!**

Hongjoong set down his Communication Pad, letting out a long and distressed sigh. He ran his hands over his face and through his air several times, trying to alleviate the exhilaration and anxiety he was feeling.

 _By Jupiter,_ he thought, _I’ve spoken to Seonghwa._

He still had mild doubt, of course, about the identity of the person he had messaged with. He wanted to desperately believe it actually was Seonghwa, but part of him believed it was just a digital echo or, worse, someone pretending to be Seonghwa.

**~*~**

The next day at the Archive #5, Jongho and Hongjoong stood dumbfounded as Hongjoong’s key couldn’t unlock the door, it kept making a beeping noise and showing the (supposedly) red light, signalizing that he was denied access.

“What in Pluto,” he muttered, trying again and growing frustrated.

“ _Hongjoong_ ,” Jongho started, placing a warm hand on his shoulder. “I don’t think it’s going to work. Let’s just contact the Commander,” he said, pulling out his Pad and typing away on it. He was leaning against the wall, a relaxed pose, but the wrinkle between his brows indicated that he was anything but relaxed. “Ugh, he’s not replying.”

Hongjoong stared at his colleague, pulling out his own Pad. It had been a very long time since his Commander had last messaged him, usually he checked in between work hours—every 20 to 30 hours.

“Did you go to breakfast this morning?” Hongjoong asked, he mostly tended to skip it.

Jongho pulled a face. “Yes. No one was there. Maybe I was early.”

“You don’t believe that.” Hongjoong bit his lip anxiously, fumbling with the Pad. He was slowly growing panicky. “Out of all times you should brew up a conspiracy theory, right now really would be the time.”

Despite the situation, Jongho grinned. “I was speaking to Mingi before resting.”

“What did he say?” asked Hongjoong with curiosity, leaning against the door. It didn’t feel important that they weren’t checking in for work, it probably didn’t matter anymore.

“He said The Mothership is completely vacant, has been for a while. He told me that Yunho’s Xplorers group was one of the last ones that was supposed to leave the landing. They never came back, neither did the others. Mingi says Yunho might be somewhere in space, most likely safe… For now,” he added the last bit with hesitation, anticipating Hongjoong’s reaction.

Hongjoong felt his heart drop. “For now?”

“Well, Yunho isn’t sure where he is, and Mingi can hardly help with that…”

“I—” Hongjoong started, swallowing. “I think I spoke to Seonghwa last night,” he confessed quietly.

“You did _what_?” Jongho's eyes widened at that.

“Yes, I was—I don’t know I just typed in his ID in the nameless application we use to communicate with Mingi and Yunho, and it gave me access to a contact,” he explained, Jongho watched him with wide eyes. “And I am pretty sure it actually was him. However impossible that might’ve been.” Jongho stared at him, mouth open. 

He blinked.

“You spoke with Seonghwa?”

“Yes!” Hongjoong exploded. “That’s what I just said.”

“B-But that’s—How can that be possible?” Jongho wondered, moving away from the wall and passing a shaky hand through his hair, pulling at the ends. “What the fuck…” he whispered, his eyes glazed over.

“I have several files of him downloaded on the Pad, but I don’t know if it would be enough to discover what happened to him. I only have until he freaked out in the laboratory…”

Jongho snapped his head up, dropping his hands, and stopping with the catatonic state. “The laboratory!” he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “Of course!”

Hongjoong stared at him in confusion. “What?”

“The laboratory. Where he found those caskets to freeze humans in.”

 _The caskets…_ Hongjoong felt his stomach twist and turn, bile rising. “You don’t think that-that he’s frozen somewhere—on one of the spaceships?”

But Jongho nodded his head. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking. I’ve been going with a theory like that for a while, that people were transported from Earth to space like that, as a measure in case we die…”

“And now we’re disappearing,” Hongjoong muttered, thinking of how empty The Jupiter was; what about the other spacecrafts? Were Jongho and him the last space people?

“Yes, now we’re disappearing,” Jongho repeated. “Did Seonghwa say anything of importance?”

Hongjoong closed his eyes, trying to recall. The messaging log had deleted itself, much to Hongjoong’s disappointment; there were bits and pieces Seonghwa had said that he had wanted to reread until his eyes hurt.

“He said something about being in a dark and cold place…?” he brought up, glancing questioningly at Jongho.

“It fits my theory, doesn’t it?”

Hongjoong sighed in a distressed manner, gliding down the wall until he sat on the metal floor. Part of him had assumed his conversation with Seonghwa had been some strange dream induced by the toxic leak from The Uranus, not really believing there was a chance to be true, but now that he mulled over it, what Seonghwa had said about hearing an engine running, trapped somewhere... Oddly, it began to take shape in Hongjoong's mind and he found the impossibility to be possible.

Was he really on The Neptune? His body frozen and his mind wired, somehow, to the space system that connected them?

“ _Fuck_.”

“Isn’t that good, though?” Jongho wondered. “It means he isn’t dead. It means he never died on Earth or here…”

“It means we’ve been lied to!” Hongjoong pointed out, dropping his hands from his head, angrily letting them fall into his lap. He let out a frustrated yell. “What else have they been lying about? Is any of this even real?” He moved his hand in a wide arch around them, referring to The Jupiter and space— _everything_. “Seonghwa asked me about my childhood and I couldn’t tell him anything. My mind went blank. Was I even born in space?” he asked, a bit hysterical, and shot Jongho an expectant look.

Jongho kneeled down next to him, grabbing Hongjoong’s hands in his to soothe him.

“I don’t have the answers, but we can try and find them ourselves. I mean, from what I’ve seen, it’s just us out here,” he said, his usual playful eyes now incredibly kind and reassuring as he stared at Hongjoong. “Let’s go find Seonghwa and the truth, shall we?”

But Hongjoong couldn’t answer, they were interrupted by the beeping of their Communication Pads. Hongjoong pulled it out, unlocking it. The urgency in Yunho’s messages was nearly palpable.

<connecting…>

**Connected!**

_> hongjoong_

_> hongjoong!_

>Yes

>I'm here

_> they never died _

_ >the humans on earth, they didn't die_

>What do you mean?

_ >they're frozen on the neptune _

_ >you have to wake them up _

_ >hongjoong, there is no one controlling the spaceships _

_ >everyone has been disappearing _

>So it's true

>It's all true

_> yes_

_> you MUST wake them up!_

>We’re going now

_ >please hurry _

_ >I think I am dying _

>What?!

>Where are you?

_ >I don't know_

_> I am looking for him. - Mingi. _

_ >Try to wake them up, Hongjoong. I’ll take care of Yunho. - Mingi. _

>Okay

>Who do we wake up?

_ >Everyone. - Mingi. _

_ >We will meet at Earth. - Mingi. _

>earth????????

(That was Jongho, gasping as he read Mingi’s message.)

_ >Earth has always been habitable. - Mingi. _

_ >they’ve been lying to us _

_ >this whole time_

_> Instead of rescuing Earth they escaped to space, leaving behind a mess. - Mingi._

>what the fuck?????

>Mingi, are you sure about this?

_> Yes. - Mingi._

_ >I will send you the coordinates once I’ve got Yunho. - Mingi. _

_ >If not, send me yours once you have landed on Earth. - Mingi. _

<disconnecting…>

**Disconnected!**

A tense silence, in which only the sound of The Jupiter’s engine sounded, whirring faintly in the background, spread out in between them. They looked at one another with their eyes huge as they assimilated the information they had just received.

“How do we know they were telling the truth?” Hongjoong asked, still sitting on the floor. “About Earth, I mean,” he clarified. “How do we even know they’re _them_?”

Jongho shook his head, his black hair moving with the brusque movement. “I don’t know. All we have left is trust.”

Base all of his survival chance on trust alone? Hongjoong shuddered at the thought.

“Then, do we go to The Neptune?”

“I suppose that’s the plan,” Jongho said with a nod. He got up, brushing off invisible dust from his trousers, he reached out his hand for Hongjoong to take.

They walked up the stairs to the fifth floor, where the connection corridor was placed, one floor underneath the commando station. Hongjoong thought of Yunho’s words, that no one was there to control the ship anymore. They were alone in the huge metal construction, floating through space.

It was a terrifying thought.

Jongho swiped his hand over the scan by the right of the door, it opened with an electrical whirring noise, which sounded a tenfold louder in the eerie silence. They crossed the corridor, it was always jarring to go through the connections. The floor was metal, like the rest of the tunnel, but lining the sides were huge windows that gave access to the vast space outside, the darkness was overwhelming—even more so now that they were alone—and the other ships could be seen from there, at least The Mothership, to which all the others were connected, like a giant star. 

Hongjoong shuddered, oddly enough he felt observed as they crossed the corridor, which wasn’t possible—if it was true what Yunho and Mingi had said. 

When they reached the end of the corridor, Jongho repeated the same motion as before, and the door opened. They crossed through it, the uncanny silence and emptiness was the same there. No distant chatter was to be heard; Hongjoong’s heart galloped in his chest. The more he realized that it had all been true, the more afraid he grew. They followed the arrows on the walls that would lead them to The Neptune.

Jongho halted, reaching out his arm to stop Hongjoong, and pressed his index finger to his lips to indicate Hongjoong to stay quiet.

He nodded his head and listened in: there were footsteps resonating somewhere by the far end of the circular corridor. They exchanged a panicked looked and moved to the inner wall of the corridor, pressing themselves into it so that whoever was wandering around wouldn’t immediately see them. Seconds later, a figure emerged. He was wearing a gray uniform and a haunted look on his face, deep bags underneath his eyes that paled the skin of his face.

Yeosang looked wrecked.

Hongjoong stepped forward. “Yeosang,” he called out, waving the guard over.

Surprise colored Yeosang’s face, his usual blank expression completely gone. “You’re—You’re still here?”

“Yes,” Jongho replied, he scanned the guard. “So are you.”

Yeosang nodded, watching the corridor with apprehension. “I thought I was the last person here. I’ve been in The Saturn, The Venus, and The Uranus. The toxic leak was a lie, I don’t know who sent that message or where everyone has gone to…”

“We don’t know either,” Hongjoong admitted. “But we are trying to go to The Neptune.”

Yeosang cocked his head in curiosity. “Why’s that?”

“It’s a long story,” Jongho interjected, “and I think it’s best if we hurry. Who knows how much time we have before we disappear.”

“You’re right, we should go,” Hongjoong agreed, he glanced at the guard. “Are you coming with us?”

Yeosang gave them a look, then stared at the empty corridor. He nodded. “I don’t really have a better option and I’d rather have company than do this alone.”

They walked in the direction of The Neptune, quietly, only the sound of their existence in space and the whirring of The Mothership’s engine filled the silence, until Hongjoong’s Pad beeped loudly multiple times. 

He got the device out with shaking hands, Jongho and Yeosang stared at him with curiosity.

<connecting…>

**Connected!**

_ >Hongjoong, it’s me. _

_ >Seonghwa. _

_ >I am back. _

_ >Sorry for making you wait. _

_ >I have decided to place my trust in you, which is why I am telling you this. _

_ >I think something is wrong. I am locked away somewhere and now that I have gained consciousness, I think I might be dying. _

_ >Slowly. _

_ >Another thing I entrust you with, is that I have lied, Hongjoong. _

_ >I know you. We know each other. _ _We have for a while._

_ >I didn't know myself until I remembered._

_ >It’s okay if you don’t remember, but before I die I want to say that it was really nice to be speaking with you again. _

_ >I don’t even know if you’ll be able to read this… _

>Seonghwa, what are you talking about?

_ >Oh, you’re still alive. _

>Yes, I’m coming to get you

>I know where you are

_ >You do? _

>Yes

>I didn't quite believe it at first

>Thinking I was just going crazy

>But I was right

>You're on The Neptune

>Hold on, please

_> I'm not sure I have that long._

>Where did we meet?

(Hongjoong lowered the Pad, not locking it, and jerked his chin forward to signalize his companions that he was ready to carry on. He followed them while he kept talking to Seonghwa. He needed to know the truth: about the spacecrafts, about himself, and about Seonghwa. About _them_.)

_ >We met in 2039. _

_ >You were protesting against the government and came into the laboratory I was working for. _

_ >You hoped to infiltrate into it. _

_ >You tried to trick me, but jokes on you, I was on board with your idea. _

_ >And not just because you’re cute. _

>I lived on Earth?

>But I was born in space, wasn't I?

_ >Are you sure about that? _

>Before meeting you I would’ve said yes, but now… 

>Not anymore

>I don’t know what the truth is anymore

>But I am willing to find out

_ >Does the truth really matter? _

_ >Isn’t it enough that we’re next to each other? _

>We’re not next to each other

_ >Ah, I had hoped to trigger your memory. _

_ >Maybe you’d remember. _

>Oh

>I'm sorry, Seonghwa

>I will try to remember

>For you

_ >It’s okay if you don’t remember right now, or ever. _

_ >I know it was real. _

>No, I want to remember

>I want to look at you and remember

>I have to go

>We’re getting close

>Yeosang is urging me to put away the Pad

<thinking…>

_ >Yeosang? _

>Yes

_ >How come he is not where I am? _

_ >We were together when it happened. _

>You know what happened?

(Hongjoong held his breath. All these hours he had spent in the Archive #5, trying to discover what had happened in 2039, he had only found scattered answers and truths, but no clear picture. Often, it had seemed that information had been tampered with, to either slow the process to find the truth or to prevent him from ever finding it at all. Seonghwa might actually hold the answer. Hongjoong felt his entire being vibrate with anticipation.)

_ >Yes. _

_ >A force. _

>A force?

_ >Nothing any human has ever seen, I believe. _

_ >There are no words to describe the force. _

_ >It’s powerful and beautiful and terrifying._

_> It was what happened on Earth._

_ >It takes you to a place. _

>What place?

_ >I don’t know._

_> Any place, I think?_

_> I wasn’t taken by it, yet. _

_ >But I might soon. _

_ >Like you and Yeosang. _

>No

>I’m getting you out of there

>We’re going back to Earth

_ >Earth, huh? _

>Yes

<disconnecting…>

**Disconnected!**

Hongjoong faltered in his steps, frowning.

His heartbeat sped up in fear and he looked at Yeosang and Jongho’s backs in front of him, for a second he had thought they had been taken. They were still there thankfully. He sighed in relief and quickened his pace to catch up to them. They were walking through the corridor connecting The Mothership and The Neptune, from the windows here, Hongjoong could make out Mars and Venus floating in the far distance, orbiting around the sun.

“We have to hurry,” he whispered, the silence felt scarce. The closer they got, the thicker the tension got. It was as if they expected someone or something to appear and stop them— _the force_ , he thought, _about to get us_. “Seonghwa disconnected just like that.”

“Seonghwa?” Yeosang repeated the name in wonderment. “Who’s that?”

“That’s who we’re trying to save,” Hongjoong explained to him. “He claims to know you, or at least _of_ you.”

Yeosang huffed in surprise. “Huh?” 

“What else did Seonghwa tell you?” Jongho asked. “I’ve tried what you did, but it didn’t work with Wooyoung… It did connect to an ID, but no one replied.”

“Wooyoung,” Yeosang repeated, this time warily, his eyebrows twitching. “I know a Wooyoung.” Jongho’s lips parted, wanting to ask something, but Yeosang shook his head. “I haven’t encountered him in a while. He might have already been taken.”

Hongjoong bit the inside of his cheek. “Seonghwa said that there’s a _force_ that takes people to a place. He says that’s what happened in 2039 and what might be happening now.”

Jongho frowned. “But Mingi is out there, in space.” He moved his hand at one of the enormous windows by the side of The Neptune’s main corridor. “He’s still here, if not how could he have messaged us.”

“Maybe he escaped,” Yeosang said.

“Maybe,” Jongho agreed, unconvinced.

They followed the arrows pointing to the basement, somehow they had silently agreed that it was where they were meant to go. Hongjoong had never been on The Neptune, yet the place looked oddly familiar to him. 

“Have you ever heard the legends of the Gray Ones?” Yeosang asked at some point, filling the unnerving silence. Jongho shook his head. “Some of my colleagues at The Saturn often spoke about one peculiar story that claimed the Gray Ones were just humans—our humans, space people—that got infected by a terrible disease, making their skin become ashy gray and that turned their minds poisonous. Some say it was what befell the humans on Earth, too, and that is why they all fled.”

“Do you believe in it?” Jongho questioned.

Yeosang shrugged. “Not really, but everything seems so much more possible now. All impossibilities have suddenly become possible. Just like that, within a blink of an eye.”

Hongjoong wavered and stared at Yeosang. Seonghwa had said something similar. It struck him as odd; maybe Seonghwa really had known Yeosang from before, when he still had lived on Earth. It made Hongjoong wonder if perhaps Yeosang also had come from Earth instead of being space born.

Maybe Seonghwa was speaking the truth the whole time when he had said he knew Hongjoong, as crazy as the idea was to him. Maybe Hongjoong wasn’t space born either.

 _Trust blindly_ ; trust the big unknown darkness around them. That really was all they had left. Everything was pointing at the fact that nothing their superiors had ever told them, nothing Hongjoong had believed for the entirety of his existence seemed to be true, and instead all these impossible theories and scary revelations were, in fact, the truth he had always searched for.

They reached the top of the last staircase separating them from the basement. It could’ve been Hongjoong’s imagination, but he felt the air to be colder down there. He tensed involuntarily.

He saw it in Jongho’s hunched shoulders and Yeosang’s balled fists that they, just like him, were on edge.

“Let’s go then,” Jongho said, fearless, and descended towards the truth.

Step by step, Hongjoong’s apprehension grew, his knees became weaker, and he feared he might slip and stumble downwards, but thankfully it didn’t happen, he reached the bottom floor safely. In front of them the thick door to the basement separated them from what they had searched.

The three boys exchanged a look before Yeosang stepped forward, from behind Hongjoong, and swiped his hand in a specific motion.

A beat of silence.

The door slid open, whirring loudly in the tense atmosphere, and inside an immense room spread out. There were uncountable metal boxes with windows on the front, where the faces of those inside peeked through. The humans were pale, with their eyes closed, and tubes and screens attached to the boxes. It was horrific. It was exactly what Seonghwa had described in those text messages he had sent Wooyoung the time he had walked into the wrong room at the laboratory on Earth.

Hongjoong could just stare at the badly lit room in terror induced awe: the light from inside the caskets produced a blue and white shimmer to the room, reflecting off the metal walls and floor. Jongho and Yeosang’s faces appeared blue as well when they stepped further into the room, glancing around with parted lips and wide eyes.

Yeosang had his gun drawn out and held it tightly in front of his chest, his shoulders tensed up. Jongho walked closer to one of the caskets, standing on his tiptoes so he could stare at their face. Hongjoong followed them into The Neptune's laboratory.

The more he stared at those sleeping and frozen faces, the more he yearned to find Seonghwa. He wondered, too, in the back of his mind, what all of this meant. How had no one talked about this place? The Neptune was known as a research station, focusing often on biological welfare, working close together with the medical faculty on The Venus. No one had _ever_ mentioned the hundreds—if not thousands—of frozen bodies in the basement of The Neptune.

Were they the firsts ones to uncover this dreadful secret?

“What does Seonghwa look like again?” asked Jongho, peering at the countless rows of frozen humans. He jerked his chin in the direction of a staircase in the distance. “I’ll take a wild guess and say this is not the only floor they have…”

Hongjoong swallowed. He pulled out his Communication Pad and loaded a picture of Seonghwa to show his companions. They nodded and spread out, searching the wide area. Hongjoong felt himself mysteriously pulled into a row by the back of the laboratory, where the ceiling light was barely reaching.

He shuddered, feeling as though he was entirely alone. He supposed that it was possible at any moment, Jongho and Yeosang could disappear just like that, taken by the invisible and unstoppable force. He let his fingers glide over the cool and impeccable smooth surface of the metal caskets, staring at the closed eyes faces inside.

It was appalling.

They were all around the same age, but different genders and ethnicities. With an uncomfortable realization, Hongjoong grew aware that all of the Archivers were around the same age as him, just like the few workers from other ships he had encountered. He wondered about his and Jongho’s Commander; what was his age, his face, his actual name? They had only ever communicated with him through the Pad, getting their orders and assignments in the form of digital messages, but there never had been a direct, face to face, encounter.

Had his Commander even been a real man? Had he even been in space at all?

Hongjoong let his hand drop, feeling dizzy and anxious. How had he never questioned _any_ of this before? Why had he just accepted anything he had been told? He shook his head, he needed to find Seonghwa, afterwards he could think about all of these revelations. He looked at the rows of caskets, a long and heavy sigh escaping his lips, and moved forward.

He reached the end of the row and moved onto the next one, where, to his surprise, his eyes found a pair of brown eyes, dozing off and blinking heavily. For a moment, all Hongjoong could do was stare in astonishment, then he finally moved.

“I found him!” he yelled. He felt nauseous when he stared at Seonghwa's face. He heard distant footsteps approaching him quickly from different corners of the awful laboratory. “How do we get him out of here?”

“And how do we wake everyone else up?” Jongho asked, stopping once he stood next to Hongjoong, searching the casket. He moved his hand to a small box attached to it, he opened the lid and behind was a keypad. “Well, great,” he muttered annoyed and slammed the lid shut too forcefully, it didn't lock and slowly opened again.

When Yeosang got to them, he was out of breath. “I think there is a control room for this whole,” he moved his free arm around in an explanatory way, “ _thing_ up there. But the door is locked, I checked. We either wake Seonghwa and everyone else up one by one, or…” He paused, grimacing. “Or we wake Seonghwa and no one else.”

“We can’t possibly do that,” Jongho said, looking around himself. He ran a hand through his black hair in a distressed manner, his eyes were wildly searching the room for an answer. 

Yeosang bit the inside of his cheek. “If someone were to open the control room for me, I think I could work through the program. I learned some about the computer system at The Saturn.”

Jongho tilted his head. “I can try to open it for you, I’ll need some tools, though. Preferably from The Uranus.”

Hongjoong groaned, this was turning out to be much more complicated than he had anticipated. “What do I do?” he asked.

Jongho looked at him. “Well, we are going to get Seonghwa out of there right now. You take care of him. Attempt to reach Yunho and Mingi.”

Hongjoong nodded, glancing at Seonghwa behind the window. He looked ethereal like that, but unapproachable as well.

“Hongjoong, you might want to take Seonghwa to The Control Room, from there you can watch everything and guide us… Warn us,” he added the last bit quietly. “And if _everything_ goes wrong, there’s a quick tunnel from The Control Room to the S.D.A.’s garage.”

Hongjoong heaved out a nervous sigh. “I can’t fly.”

“Doesn’t matter, you just put it some coordinates from Earth. In all S.D.A.’s there’s a catalogue containing the safest landing strips,” Yeosang told him dismissively. “Any questions?” Jongho and Hongjoong shook their heads. Yeosang nodded distractedly, as if he was speaking with himself. He dialed a number into the keypad by Seonghwa’s casket, it showed a light which Hongjoong assumed was the red one because Jongho’s lips turned downwards and Yeosang tried a new code.

“Do you even know what the code is?” Jongho asked at the fifth attempt.

“No. I was just going through different protocol numbers I learned. They always use the same numbers for things on here, a repetition of the same serial numbers. It’s for safety reasons.”

Jongho rolled his eyes, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “By Pluto, this is fun,” he grumbled.

“I’m sorry that this is not more entertaining for you,” responded Yeosang, glaring at him.

“Jongho, try contacting Yunho and Mingi again,” Hongjoong told him, raising his eyebrows meaningfully. Jongho scoffed but obeyed. “Sorry, he can get a bit… unpleasant when he’s nervous.” 

“It’s fine,” Yeosang promised him.

Hongjoong stared at Seonghwa through the glass, his heart was galloping in his chest, had for a while. Ever since he first had found him. He was worried that they were too late and Seonghwa was about to die, or that he’d just disappear—or that _they’d_ _disappear_. But another side of him, a much bigger one, was full of hope and expectations. He wondered what it’d be like to hear Seonghwa’s voice.

He swallowed, feeling himself blush.

“ _Aha_!” Yeosang exclaimed, pumping his fist into the air victoriously and shimmying his hips in a funny way. He closed the lid of the small box and walked in front of Seonghwa. There was a loud hissing noise and vapor was coming out of the casket, Yeosang waited a beat before he grabbed the handle and yanked the heavy door open.

Seonghwa was retrained to a white cushion, dressed in all white, too. His eyelids fluttered open, his lips parted in surprise, and his eyes immediately fell on Hongjoong.

“You found me,” he whispered, his voice raspy and weak.

Hongjoong moved before he even realized what he was doing, and grabbed the restrains, undoing them. Once Seonghwa was free, he staggered forward. Yeosang and Hongjoong caught him and helped him out of the casket. Jongho came jogging towards them, clutching his Communication Pad in one hand.

“Holy Jupiter,” he muttered, eyes wide as saucers.

“Seonghwa,” Hongjoong said softly. He was cold to the touch.

“I’m fine,” the young man told them, straightening himself up. He reached out his arms, wiggling his fingers curiously. He turned his hands over, staring at his palms. Then he squatted a few times, patting his legs. “Yes, I’m mostly fine. Everything seems to work.” He pinched his cheeks.

“Any word from your friends?” Yeosang asked, addressing Jongho, and stepped away from Hongjoong and Seonghwa to give them space.

“No,” Jongho answered with a shake of his head.

“Hongjoong,” Seonghwa said quietly. His lips stretched out into a small and hesitant smile. “Did you remember?”

Hongjoong swallowed guiltily. “No, but it doesn’t matter. You’re here now, this is a new start.”

“Yes, it’s better than nothing,” Seonghwa agreed. “May I hug you?” he asked after a beat of silence, his cheeks growing pink.

Hongjoong swallowed again, a lump in his throat. He felt his mouth run dry and his entire self tremble, but he nodded his head. Seonghwa moved in, wrapping his arms around Hongjoong tightly, and buried his face into the crook of his shoulder, inhaling deeply. Hongjoong returned the hug hesitantly, grabbing Seonghwa’s white shirt.

_He was real. He was alive._

“I’ve missed this,” Seonghwa whispered. “It’s probably been a very long time since I last got to do this, but it feels just the same.” Hongjoong grabbed his shirt tighter, allowing himself to melt into Seonghwa’s embrace.

Their odd, albeit sweet reunion was interrupted by a loud _bang_ coming from the entrance of the laboratory. The group startled, Seonghwa and Hongjoong pulled apart to look at Jongho and Yeosang, the latter had his gun in front of his chest and stared at the direction of the noise.

“What was that?” Jongho whispered apprehensively.

“I don’t know, but we should leave,” Hongjoong responded, looking around himself.

“Someone has to stay to wake everyone else up,” Yeosang reminded them.

“So we split up?” Seonghwa inquired.

Yeosang nodded his head. “Sounds good to me.” He pointed the tip of his gun at the control room upstairs. “Me and Jongho will try to get in there. You two try to reach The Mothership.”

They nodded their heads, but Jongho grabbed Hongjoong’s wrist. “Wait.” His eyes were on the gun attached to Yeosang’s belt. The guard looked down as well, he uncapped the gun.

“Do either of you know how to shoot a gun?” he asked, Hongjoong shook his head.

To their collective surprise, Seonghwa nodded in affirmation. “Yes.” He grabbed the small handgun out of Yeosang’s grip and turned it around, to check for the ammo. He hummed. “This will do nicely.” 

Hongjoong was terrified of Seonghwa; this stranger he had just saved, who was completely unshaken about his own story, as if he had known all along how it would go down. And Hongjoong wondered then if Seonghwa had perhaps lied to him, manipulated him so that he’d come to his rescue.

He side-glanced Seonghwa, in his freakishly clean white button up and the white trousers, his feet bare. His black hair had been brushed back, half hidden underneath a cap that Seonghwa had long removed, instead he was letting it fall savagely around his head. It had exactly the same length as those few pictures Hongjoong had seen of him from 2039.

“Now that that’s settled, let’s go,” Yeosang urged them.

Jongho and Hongjoong looked at one another, and carried still with the emotions he was feeling, Hongjoong moved forward to embrace his coworker—no, not coworker, his _friend_. Jongho patted his shoulder awkwardly.

“May we see each other again,” Hongjoong mumbled.

"Yes."

They moved quietly, using the dimness of the room to their advantage as they stuck to the shadows, letting themselves morph into them. They walked through the labyrinth of caskets, passing by a Storage Room until they reached the entrance. Seonghwa put his hand on Hongjoong’s chest, telling him to stay behind as he peeked around the corner, eyeing the area by the entrance. But there was nothing there, no one wandering around, neither was in the corridor or staircase. Whoever had caused that bang was either gone again, or somewhere in the laboratory with Yeosang and Jongho.

Seonghwa and Hongjoong made their way up to Floor 0 of The Neptune, passing by countless of corridors submerged in sinister silence.

Sometimes, there was a buzzing or whirring, but those were just the signals that the spacecraft was alive and working. A light flickered when walked through the connection to The Mothership. Seonghwa stopped and jerked his head in the direction of a small door. It was hidden between two windows, nearly imperceptible, which Hongjoong guessed was on purpose.

Space looked terrifyingly huge from there, in the distance there was The Mars ship suspended, and further away was the Landing. Nearer to The Neptune and further down was a connection piece Hongjoong didn’t remember ever seeing on the maps. It led to the small, windowed Graveyard, from up there he could almost make out the numerous graves.

“What’s that?” Seonghwa asked.

Hongjoong shrugged, frowning. “I am not sure. That connection piece,” he pointed at the narrow tunnel below them, “is not one I ever remember being mentioned.”

“You don’t know much, do you?” Seonghwa questioned, it wasn’t ill intended but Hongjoong's skin prickled with shame. “We should continue.”

“Yes,” he agreed; his eyes lingered on the scenery outside. It felt as if they weren’t supposed to be here anymore—any of them—and the uncertainty of their situation was overwhelming.

They crossed the connection and when the door to The Mothership opened, Hongjoong shuddered. It was pitch dark, only the chilling emergency lights were on, which appeared in an ugly yellow-greenish tone to Hongjoong, but he knew they were supposed to be red.

“Is this normal?” Seonghwa asked asked as he approached the arrows on the metallic wall to read the directions.

Hongjoong shook his head, glancing around them and trying to discern something in the darkness. “No, it’s quite unusual. There are generators that keep everything running. There was light in here before, when I came with Jongho and Yeosang.”

Seonghwa moved to their left, Hongjoong followed him. They only walked a few meters when they were startled by a beeping sound. Seonghwa held the handgun up, but lowered it the moment Hongjoong retrieved his Communication Pad from his trousers.

He unlocked it.

**Connected!**

_ >hongjoong, this is yunho again _

_ >mingi found me _

_ >I am safe and sound _

_ >or as safe as it gets out here now _

_ >mingi isn’t as safe, though _

>Yunho

>Hello

>What happened to Mingi?

_ >I wasn’t alone in my s.d.a. _

_ >there were grey ones with me_

_> they infiltrated the spacecrafts because the protection shields are down_

_> I am pretty sure they're not the only ones attempting to attack us_

_ >mingi got infected by a grey one_

_> and as they say one bite is enough_

_ >not sure if we will make it out of here unscathed _

>What do you mean the protection shields are down?

>Yunho, where exactly were you stranded with your S.D.A.?

_ >nowhere _

_ >turns out we never left the landing _

_ >I’m not sure what exactly happened to my group _

_ >the landing is a complete graveyard _

_ >I don’t really remember anything _

_ >I thought we had left, but we never did _

_ >mingi told me he discovered something and had to make himself disappear so he could investigate_

_> so he wouldn't be taken_

>What did he discover?

_ >well, he found out about the frozen bodies and that earth is habitable_

_> always has been_

_ >and other things he didn’t elaborate on_

_ >but I think we were alone out here for a long time _

_ >slowly all space people started to vanish around the ships, like a clock starting with the saturn _

_ >the jupiter was the last one _

>Hold on a second

>We’re entering The Control Room

_ >you’re in the mothership? _

>Yes

_ >be careful _

_ >you’re not alone in there anymore_

_> whether it's the grey ones or something else_

>We’re aware

>There was an explosion in The Neptune earlier

_ >did you see them? _

>No

_ >not that it matters anyway _

_ >just be careful _

_ >I have to go, mingi is regaining consciousness _

_ >the transformation is going to start now _

_ >we’re going to try to get to earth_

_> maybe there is something down there that will stop him from becoming a grey one himself_

>Yes

>Be careful

>See you down there

<disconnecting…>

**Disconnected!**

Hongjoong pocketed his Pad again, walking through the door of The Control Room, Seonghwa was already inside, looking around in wonderment. There were several computers, all turned on, showing different rooms from all ten spacecrafts, the recordings were all in black and white. By the end of the room was a huge controlling centre, buttons and levers and keypads all over the place.

As expected, this room was vacant as well.

Unlike in the corridor, where only the emergency lights had been on, in The Control Room the electrical devices all seemed to work, which meant that the power hadn’t failed. Someone had turned it off purposefully.

Hongjoong scanned the room, his eyes halting on the block of computers that showed The Neptune. He walked closer, searching for the laboratory room, when he found it he leaned forward. He found Jongho trying to open the door with what seemed to be a self made tool. Yeosang stood on the small staircase, his gun in hand, he was firing it at something or someone in the laboratory, but Hongjoong couldn’t make out anything. Was it the force? Or was it the _something else_ in there with them—the Gray Ones, perhaps?

“So what do we do in here?” Seonghwa asked, looking around helplessly. He had placed the gun on to the controlling center. He had his arms crossed in front of his chest and was looking at Hongjoong expectantly.

Hongjoong shrugged, there wasn’t a point in being in there anymore considering that Jongho and Yeosang were trapped in the laboratory now with some invisible enemy.

Hongjoong saw a microphone by the controlling center, he edged closer to it and ran his fingertips over the different buttons and keypad. He grabbed the microphone, writing in the code from The Neptune, which was conveniently written on a piece of paper—together with the codes for all other ships—and turned on the mic.

“Hello,” he spoke hesitantly. Through the screen, he saw Jongho and Yeosang’s heads snap up. “Can you hear me? Nod your head if you do.” On screen his friends complied. Yeosang was still holding his gun up high, but not firing anymore. “Are you still in danger?” he asked; they shook their heads.

“I think you just put _us_ in danger,” Seonghwa muttered, walking to the door of The Control Room to close it.

“Let me try to open the door for you, there has to be a way to do it from up here.” Hongjoong put the mic back down and went to The Neptune section. He searched through the computers and several drawers, and read the labels of the keypad. By sheer dumb luck he found one that read ‘Laboratory Control Room’, there came several codes written with it and instructions. He let out a victorious cry. He walked back to the microphone. “I’ve got the code for it. For the door, for the waking program… Follow my instructions, alright?”

Jongho nodded.

They worked as a team, quickly and assertively, and soon Jongho and Yeosang were leaving the laboratory again, on their way to the Landing, where they all were supposed to meet. Hongjoong exhaled slowly, feeling victorious and relieved. They had done it, he wanted nothing more than to get out. _Damned be the truth_ , he thought. It didn't matter anymore, he just wanted to leave this empty spaceship.

Seonghwa had been unusually quiet the past few minutes, so Hongjoong turned around to face him curiously. He found him staring at the entrance door of The Control Room with a wary and frightened look, before Hongjoong could ask him what was up, a growl resonated from the other side. It sounded other worldly and echoed through the empty corridors in The Mothership. 

Hongjoong’s blood froze in his veins and he let out a shuddering breath.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he muttered. Seonghwa snapped his head in Hongjoong's direction, he was pale and he had picked up the gun again, clutching it in his right hand, which he had pressed to his chest, the mouth of the gun pointing upwards.

“Yes, fuck,” he agreed, his voice shaky. “I think there are a few of them—whatever they are.”

“Pluto, this is all terrible. How did this happen? How did _they_ allow for this to happen?”

Seonghwa’s face scrunched up. “ _Pluto_?” he wondered quietly, amused by it. “I don’t think _they_ even knew this was going to happen.”

Hongjoong felt nauseous, ranking his hands through his hair and over his face in distress. They were going to die in The Mothership at the hands of some weird alien race. Seonghwa put the gun away, onto one of the computers, and moved his hands to grab Hongjoong’s, he lowered them slowly and carefully, and regarded him with a piercing and sympathetic look.

“Hongjoong,” he whispered, not letting go of his hands. “Look at me,” he demanded softly.

Hongjoong complied and stared at those warm brown eyes. Technically, he knew this thought was nonsense, he knew how space worked—with its planets orbiting the sun, and the moons circling the planets, and the stars suspended on their own—but he couldn’t help when he thought that Seonghwa’s gaze was so warm and reassuring that he could very much be the sun of Hongjoong’s little universe. 

One in which Hongjoong orbited around Seonghwa.

He swallowed, wondering where such thoughts were coming from, but he felt so comfortable with Seonghwa already, as if they had known one another for much longer than an hour or so.

“You good?” the taller one wondered, smiling hesitantly.

Hongjoong nodded; he leaned forward momentarily, still caught up with his thoughts, as if something pulled him towards Seonghwa, and before he could do something regrettable, he leaned back again. He stabilized himself, slowly removing his hands from Seonghwa’s.

“I am fine,” he said. “But I don’t know how we’ll make it out of here.”

Seonghwa peered around. “Didn’t Yeosang say that there was a direct corridor from here to the Landing.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he did.” Hongjoong looked around The Control Room as well, trying to find it with his bare eyes, but he couldn’t make out much. “We should turn on the lights in here, whoever turned them off must need the darkness…”

“Good thinking,” Seonghwa agreed. 

They split up to search for the corridor, the snarling from the alien creatures outside accompanied them, the sound of strange footsteps grew in numbers. It was unsettling and frightening; Hongjoong did his best to ignore them.

Seonghwa was running his hands over the wall where the entrance of the room was located, trying to find an unevenness to it where the secret door could be hidden at. Hongjoong stopped in his movements, scanning The Control Room; _where would I hide the entrance to a secret corridor?_ He bit his upper lip, his eyes falling onto the metallic floor, which was bright in the white ceiling lights. Slowly an idea formed.

“Seonghwa,” he called out. Seonghwa looked up, and Hongjoong beckoned him over with his hand. “I think we might have been looking at the wrong place.”

“What do you mean?” he asked with a frown.

Hongjoong jerked his chin at the floor. It didn’t take him long before he found a handle well hidden into the structure of the ground, giving away to a trapdoor which, Hongjoong hoped, was where the corridor to the Landing was beneath.

Seonghwa’s expression brightened. “Hongjoong!” he said, turning to look at him. “You marvelous genius!” he exclaimed and, in a wave of euphoria, he grabbed Hongjoong’s face, dragging him close, to plant a wet smack onto his lips.

Hongjoong froze, his eyes widening, and his heart beating loudly. There was a rushing sound in his ears and he belatedly noticed his entire face was on fire. Seonghwa drew back seconds later, blushing as well, as he registered what he had just done.

“Oh, uh,” he stuttered, biting his lower lip, and dropping his hands from Hongjoong’s face. “Sorry,” he apologized. He looked everywhere except at Hongjoong.

“It’s, er, it’s fine,” Hongjoong assured him, his voice higher than usual. “You don’t have to apologize. I-I, uhm, liked that,” he confessed, looking at Seonghwa hopefully.

Seonghwa snapped his head towards him, his hesitance gone within seconds, and instead a radiant smile bloomed on his face. “Good,” he said. “Then, you won’t mind if I do it again?”

Hongjoong shook his head. “No,” he squeaked out, face growing warmer, if that was even possible at this rate.

When Seonghwa cradled his face again, he did so much more delicately than before—it wasn’t a mindless action done in exultation, but calculated and deliberate. His thumbs ran over Hongjoong’s cheeks and his eyes were serious yet warm when they stared at him. Seonghwa moved in slowly, his hot breath fanning over Hongjoong’s lips, and finally he kissed him again.

It was cautious and intentional, the softness of his lips surprised Hongjoong. He tried to kiss him back, as inexperienced as he was, and hoped that despite his lack of expertise, Seonghwa could feel that he really was enjoying it. Hongjoong grabbed Seonghwa’s waist to ground himself, it was becoming intoxicating, the way Seonghwa moved his lips against his; with so much care and purpose.

As if this was the only reason Seonghwa breathed, for Hongjoong it might become.

Breathlessly, Seonghwa pulled apart, which might have been good, because Hongjoong’s head had begun spinning due to the lack of oxygen reaching his body, and had also started to run unusually hot. It wasn’t just his cheeks and ears that were flushed, his entire body felt as if it was on fire.

Seonghwa cleared his throat. “I’ve missed that,” he mumbled lovingly.

“You mean, we’ve kissed before?” Hongjoong wondered.

“Yes. Once,” Seonghwa responded. “On Earth; before, as you called it, Doomsday.”

“Oh.” Hongjoong tightened his grip on Seonghwa’s waist. He felt guilt course through his body as he could not recall it. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

Seonghwa shook his head. “It’s fine. This is our second chance.” He leaned in again and gave Hongjoong a chaste kiss, then he stepped back completely. Hongjoong already missed his warmth, his touch, his lips on his. “Shall we leave?” he asked, pointing his head in the direction of the trapdoor.

“ _Yes_.”

They walked to the trapdoor and opened it. Now that Hongjoong wasn’t so preoccupied with Seonghwa’s lips on his and befuddled by his proximity, he could hear the creatures on the other side of The Control Room’s door, snarling loudly, their paws scratching the metal as they tried to get inside. It was disturbing.

They descended the ladder, one by one, until they found themselves in a badly lit and narrow corridor. They exchanged a silent yet meaningful look, Seonghwa still held the handgun and Hongjoong had his Communication Pad ready in case Yunho and Mingi or Yeosang and Jongho messaged them. 

The two of them began walking towards their freedom.

~*~

The Mothership was like a big star suspended in the universe, with nine sharp spikes, seven of them were named after planets. It was eerily quiet in the hugeness of the metallic spacecrafts, the dimension of them made the absence of life so much more impactful, only the whirring of the engines and the distant snarling of the alien creatures sounded throughout them.

From the Landing a single, small ship left, heading towards Earth, the noise of its blast was swallowed by the vastness of space.

They didn’t look back, trusting blindly, and that invisible and beautiful _force_ took the star with it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading !!!💛💛  
> Feel free to leave comments and kudos (really would mean a lot to me ^^)
> 
> I hope you all have a very nice New Year Eve's, and Happy New Year! See you all in 2020 ✊
> 
> You can find me on Twitter here: [@hhhjoong](https://twitter.com/home)!💛


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